


The Pythagorean Theorem

by Analinea



Series: Living Without Your Name [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Healing, Mourning, Past Character Death, Post Nogitsune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:08:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia can't pronounce her name anymore, not when she had to scream it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pythagorean Theorem

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm continuing this series with Lydia's part! 
> 
> I did not write this as an Allydia story in the sense that they're not a couple in it (though it made me want to write an actual Allydia story, so...who knows?) for reasons that I'll develop in the end notes (including that it doesn't fit the canon-ish universe of the serie). You're free to read it as such though, if you wish!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Lydia used to know a lot of people. Throw the best parties in town, house full but not a single stranger coming in.

Not many people knew Lydia, or maybe not even one. Until a bright girl came into her life.

 

Φ

 

She remembers a time when she looked at a mark around her throat and proudly said that she had nothing to hide. She wonders what to do with the invisible scars running under her skin, fault lines growing with each quake caused by her sorrow.

Lydia looks at the smooth skin that she traces with a finger, down from her chin to the dip between her collar bones. There's something missing there. She can still feel the contours of her best friend's name scrapping the inside of her trachea. There should be something to show that pain. There should be a girl sitting besides her. One who's name she can't pronounce anymore. Not after screaming it.

 

Φ

 

Lydia talked about the Fields Medal once. She thought about it a lot, before and after that. There's other distinctions she intended to win, but that one stuck for a while.

Times passed and at some point she couldn't stop thinking about the Pythagorean Theorem.

 

Φ

 

They go to school. They defeat a thousand years old trickster, they lose friends, and they go to school.

Lydia keeps her scores perfect.

She exchanges looks with Scott. It helps. She would like to exchange looks with Isaac and tell him some of the things that were whispered between girls in the secret hours of the night. But he ran a-. He left, a softer part of her corrects.

She would like to exchange looks and midnight calls with Stiles too, but he has his own running-away-on-the-spot going on, and she can't- she won't- she's not strong enough to confront him about it just yet. She can't lift him up the ground and put his arm around her shoulder, carry him, not when she needs someone to lean on too.

So when it becomes too much, she calls Scott. They don't talk about _her_ , never say her name. They talk about whether or not they should contact Isaac -that Stiles found in one quick search-, what they could do to help Stiles if only he let them.

As times passes, they talk about Kira and Scott's guilt about loving her. Then Liam when the kid -not much younger than them, really, but they feel so old now- barrels into their life with anger issues and new werewolf powers.

They talk about the early days of this life and the friends they lost. Lydia thinks that if they can do that, one day they'll be able to do the same with the days they go through now.

They also form plans to beat new villains, avoid more death. They still don't know how to bring down the monsters inside of themselves but maybe there's something cathartic in running their enemies out of town.

Times passes. There's a name that's still silent, the air cut in its shape all around them and suffocating them sometimes. There's days Lydia is sure someone will have to drag her to a locker room and kiss the air back into her lungs.

 

The worst part of everyday is that, when the pain in her heart is too much, she would love to turn to  _her_ . But there's only emptiness where the cause of her pain is not.

Lydia tries not to let that emptiness fill her up. But she can't paint her nails without staring at the nail polish  _she_ always stole. Can't get into bed without feeling the blatant absence of another body sitting cross-legged on it, sleeping next to her in it. Can't stop hearing that laugh that carves into her and feeling that touch like the phantom pain of a missing limb.

She's been cut in half. She keeps looking for the other one, turning her head, opening her mouth to share some clever remark. The words die on her tongue each time she catches herself forgetting that...she's never getting that part of her back. Never going to hear that voice again.

She asks herself, then, if that pain is something that could be surgically removed from her like a dead organ would be. Like her living best friend has been.

 

Φ

 

They used to talk together for hours. Leave one another after school, wave goodbye, and once Lydia got home she pulled out her phone to usually a least one text already.

There were hours with nothing, obviously, busy with boyfriends, family, or just empty moments. But they even talked while doing homework, because  _she_ could concentrate better on it if she had something else going on on the side. 

Lydia still wonders sometimes what they talked about, what they could possibly have to say to one another when they were already together eight hours a day. It's like an itch sometimes, the way she wants to open their text conversation, but she can't. She just can't.

 

Φ

 

It gets better. Even while there's a new threat into town that they have to deal with, Lydia heals. She can almost feel it, the pain not gone but...less there. Not dulled but more distant. Like an echo, or the faraway voice of someone calling after you.

Maybe the distraction caused by the benefactor (and being on a deadpool, hunted, forced to listen to her grandmother's dying breath, almost killed ; having to type up  _her_ name without being ready for it) helps push the sadness and grief back a little. 

Lydia thinks about it the morning after dreaming about her best friend, waking up missing her like the first day of not finding her in a crowd, crying and crying like she hasn't in weeks, months. It comes and it goes, that deep rooted sadness. It's the way of life, she thinks.

That morning, tears drying on her cheeks, she opens her laptop and clicks on an unnamed folder. Looks at the thumbnails. Almost opens one of the files. She sniffles, erases the feeling of salt water on her face with shaking fingers, and closes her computer again.

 

Φ

 

They loved singing and dancing together. That's a thing not much people know about Lydia, or well, only one person ever knew. It's even hard to imagine, a little out of character because she danced at parties, but never too much. She hated losing herself surrounded by strangers.

But after her best friend entered her life, she discovered the joy of singing loudly along with cheesy songs, out of tune, and then dancing like idiots in the middle of their rooms. She stopped doing it after  _she_ died, but still misses it, sometimes. Puts loud music in her room and closes her eyes and pretend she's not alone when she yells the lyrics.

 

Φ

 

The day Scott calls her to let her know how Stiles is -he didn't show up to school, didn't answer his phone, the Sheriff called, it was worse than any panic caused by new bodies pilling up-, she reflects on denial and avoidance.

She's afraid of losing a friend to this one monster they can't defeat because it lives inside of him. Not possessing him, no, that one they proved able to trap and get rid of. Just, a festering part of him, an infected wound they can't access to cut off and clean. The kind Stiles has to fight himself, and all they can do is support him while he goes through it.

She wishes it's something she could tick and kill with a bit of strategy and some spell she would find in an old grimoire.

She wishes her best friend could help her with this battle, back her up with a well-aimed arrow. Shaft of gold and sharp tip of light, embedding itself in the darkness consuming their friend, filling him up with warmth again. Colors like sunrise.

 

Φ

 

When she was a kid, Lydia thought that when her grandmother was young, the world was entirely black and white. She never really managed to wrap her head around the concept of colors in this world photographed in monochrome.

It's a bit like this. She doesn't quite manage to wrap her head around the concept of waking up one morning, and finding that there's one person that's just...not there.

 

Φ

 

Lydia is mad at A-...at  _her_ sometimes. Angry like she's never been before. She feels bad about it, at first, cursing a dead girl for being dead. She feels egotistical about being angry to be left all alone when  _she_ lost her entire future.

But Lydia can't help it, and she guesses it's a natural, human reaction. She's really screaming angry, hitting things angry. She wants to throw things at the walls.

She has whole heated arguments about it in her mind, a familiar voice answering softly at first, then screaming back at her saying things like  _well it's not my fault, is it?_ to which Lydia says  _I asked you no to come, didn't I?_

Even if it's only in her head, she can never tell who wins the argument. It feels good because she can vent her frustration and anger. It feels awful because she's only doing it with herself. It's like walking in a circle. She can never have an answer from the one person she needs to say this to.

 

Lydia has always been better at math and physics than words. She can read dead languages and learned a few very living ones already, but she struggles to use her own sometimes. She huffs and crosses her arms to express herself, smiles, shrugs, straighten. She doesn't know how to wield words like swords.

So she makes calculations. She takes the average life expectancy for a woman, reduces it a bit because of the hunting life, minus seventeen. She keeps that number close to her heart, thinks that at the end of it she'll get to give her best friend a piece of her mind for leaving like that. For making the Banshee scream her name.

 

Φ

 

Lydia feels guilty sometimes. She tried to prevent it from happening and she failed. She felt it coming. Why didn't they listen to her? Why did they come to rescue her? What use is her power, if she can do nothing with it except find the bodies of strangers and loved ones?

 

Φ

 

One of her greatest strength is that she learned to keep her head held high under every circumstances. She can get through the worst and keep walking.

She always figured that it could also be a great weakness, trying to stay strong on legs that are crumbling apart underneath her. It's doomed to fail. At some point, you have to admit that you need to sit down.

 

She also knows that it's not only the loss of her best friend that she needs to mourn, but a future that will never happen. Promises that will never be kept. Secrets that will never be shared.

Lydia discovers some things about herself, echoing past-conversations about love and boys. It's too late to go back on this subject with All- with  _her_ . It hurts.

She lets the pain hit, waits for it to dull a little. It's getting better.

She's glad that she learned to sit down so she can get up better. Allison taught her that.

 

Φ

 

So, if the first side of the triangle is all the days they had, and the second side is all the days they should have had, maybe the last one will be the days before they can be together again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you though about the story, or even just put a smiley in the comments if you have 5 seconds, it makes any day better :) I also feed on kudos, so don't let me starve to death!  
> Rant on:  
> So, why I didn't made this an Allydia story: first it doesn't fit in this canon-ish universe where Allison was with Scott then Isaac ; and second I just have strong feelings about friendship. I think that we generally don't think that the love between friends can be as strong as any romantic love, which I disagree about: they're different forms of love, that's all. So I wanted to write about that strong friendship (and losing it).
> 
> Also, the plan was originally to write a story for each of the characters that knew Allison, but I fear that I'll pass on Scott's because I can't write from his point of view for shit T.T I'll try again, but I'd like to give him justice so...we'll see! I do have a Stisaac story planned though, so keep an eye out for that (and what does it say about me that I'm better at writing the assholes, I wonder...)!


End file.
